


In the Silver Sea

by samskeyti



Category: Cambridge Spies
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-20
Updated: 2012-12-20
Packaged: 2017-11-21 15:20:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,638
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/599276
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/samskeyti/pseuds/samskeyti
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In memory, the water’s clear as sunlight, almost bright enough to breathe and though off in the dark of his mind he can feel weeds reaching and mud silting his nose, he could hold his breath much better then.</p><p>Contains consideration of suicide and mention of Julian Bell's death.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In the Silver Sea

**Author's Note:**

  * For [matchsticks](https://archiveofourown.org/users/matchsticks/gifts).



In memory, the water’s clear as sunlight, almost bright enough to breathe and though off in the dark of his mind he can feel weeds reaching and mud silting his nose, he could hold his breath much better then.

Remember the trousers Anthony wore that spring? Canary yellow, like he cared for nothing but every eye following him over the lawn. Daffodil yellow, in some lights. Reclined on a picnic blanket, straight-faced and reciting, _for oft, when on my couch I lie, in vacant or in pensive mood,_ raising a glass to Guy and drinking quickly, both a little breathless when they lower their chins. He hates that poem, actually, but then he also maintains he won’t read Keats. It makes him maudlin. Guy sometimes swoons at him, claps his forehead and sighs about clouds, makes his face entirely frown and eyelashes until Anthony succumbs and tackles him.

They kiss in Guy’s bed, never Anthony’s. They kiss aimlessly, really, brushing their faces together, desultory hands in each other’s hair and Anthony’s mouth feels like the slowest, idlest thing in the world until he stops and pulls back and Guy sees his eyes, dazed yet concentrating fiercely, his hand still on Guy’s neck. He drops their foreheads together gently and this, like all the rest of it, might be a kind of spell, a charm for memory.

Spells never work outside of children’s books, but perhaps the whole of this one did. Falling asleep with Anthony draped across him, Guy shirtless and Anthony’s mouth lingering over his clavicle. A hand on his buzzing temple. A hand on his belly. Sometimes Guy woke and felt himself still snoring lightly under Anthony’s cheek, woke confused and for a moment felt what everyone thought, that they must have been at it though it never went further than this. Than Anthony waking late, blinking at the first gold of morning.

**

Opera’s a particular torture, Jack says. He’s mocking him, standing in Anthony’s room sarcastic and glowing as he fixes his bow tie, but still Anthony can see his point. It’s settling into a wide plush seat, beautiful suits, coccooned in crimson and gilt and watching people more alive and large than you with all their blood running out, unflinching. Anthony rolls his eyes and pulls Jack’s tie minutely straighter.

Jack can sing. Not like this, admittedly, but well enough. Guy really can’t but the first thought Anthony will ever have when he thinks of opera will be Guy sweating and joyful at a window, the casement flung wide and the gramophone behind him, filling the quad with hands and music.

Jack folds a hand over the programme and a hand, low and discreet in Anthony’s. Flashes him a sly, anticipatory grin as the orchestra finishes tuning, assembles itself after a pause like a deep sigh into the overture and Anthony thinks, even though the velvet would make Kim itch, even though Donald always thought it all a little _much_ , he loves this, absolutely.

**

There’s a specific thin green to the light through a window in early morning. Even in London, in their dear, horrible flat, even after they painted the walls and brightened the sickly cast of the place, morning makes Guy queasy.

Anthony’s hands are on him, following, mirroring like it’s his way of listening and Guy’s speechless, not weeping under his hands but as still as he can make himself, like it’s his way of speaking. Like he understands now what Anthony meant once, that he’d listen if only Guy would shut _up._

The warm sheets, the boy beside him who wasn’t — didn’t matter. Anthony, come into his room too early. This is all he remembers now of the important things, of Julian, of the way his heart divided, hinged open but didn’t separate and wouldn’t let him die of grief as he’d thought you must, trapped under the weight of it all. It isn’t that that he remembers now, but the windows open to their furthest ebb and that wasn’t far, though the light kept coming, muted and watery. That and the touch of Anthony’s face and his hands.

**

Kim said he’d buried him in Guernica, said it a week later when there were still, officially, only rumours though the catastrophe of it was plain. 

Guy turns, head tipped back as if tears could be decanted, a hand over his mouth though really there was nothing heroic about it, nothing significant in a scrap of a picture dropped into the dirt where there had been no resistance, no ambulances. As if any death is enough.

He can picture Kim’s hands in the dust, stained with umber, burnt siena, ochre. Burnt, all of it. He should feel frantic, should want to kneel and claw and scratch him out of the ground, want his face and the last shred of him but he doesn’t. He doubts he’ll feel anything but numb again.

He can’t look at Kim, though he feels his embrace, rough and sudden and it’s just a _picture_ torn up in spite and longing and he’ll end up with that as a postcard, an endplate to his fucking life when there was brown dust on Julian’s face, filling his eyes and that was real and it should have been enough.

**

Anthony was always a calming presence, but blast, this is not the first time he’s wanted to slap a man, so dearly the faint burn of it blushes his palm. He’d never taken a hand to Donald’s skin but, God, the way he’d have bloomed almost violet under his blow, nothing but skin and silence and eyes. He’d not slapped Guy either. Guy’d have wrestled him or, after a certain quantity of drink, have given a thready gasp, lashes fluttering, urging him on and hinting at a memory shared yet never real and there’s always been a gut-wrenching nostalgia to him, something Anthony couldn’t tear his eyes from. His face, the sheen sweated under his eyes, his open lips. 

And it isn’t Jack between them, or Julian. He thinks it must have been an inside job, only he can’t tell now who was deflecting and who wanted to look like he wasn’t trying at all, who was ruinously jealous and who should have cut their losses. Who was — wine-bruised mouth and all the rest — loved and who was sharply, clearly, not.

**

His hands stretch into the broad sunlight of an American afternoon. He knows he’s ludicrous, a jester not even sure what he’s shouting, _Pinko, pink_. The car has a small, perceptible give beneath his feet, his shirt’s pulling out of his belt and a tremor’s starting in his knees and fuck, it’s over. Almost over and if some miracle, some triumph of American dull-wittedness leaves all this overlooked, then —. He closes his eyes. The light filters through his skin, still stings and he’s well aware, actually, thank you _America_ , that it’s been over for some time. 

Guy can feel the room again, whole and turning a soft, rosy gold around him, jazz songs bubbling and he feels champagne-stupid though he’d had only, mostly gin. Anthony’s flushed and young and looks like he could, with not such a great deal of encouragement, be irresponsible. Guy has sharp, tender words for his face, for him like this but he merely grins and hauls him closer into their stumbling dance, hands on elbows, a small fond noise as he’s steadied, a brief rest of forehead before he steps again, one and two and someone’s singing something terribly witty, improving on Porter and Guy simply holds and simply smiles.

**

For the end, the worst, Anthony’s considered the _what_ and settled. The when will declare itself. The details, the manner and mode, the which and how of it, _God_. Probably a train. The light blazing ahead of it, that would be possible. The white, brilliant absence of it, like Turner managed for ships and horizons. He could step into that. 

Not a gun. A spy with a distaste for the things, farcical but there one is. Hanging’s too grotesque. A high building equally, differently messy. A bridge, perhaps. A silent, waxen fall into water — he’s always found that intriguing. Strong poison he could source ahead of time, but the keeping of it terrifies him, honestly. Of course, once acquainted with it, there’s no conceivable level of drunkenness where one could be that mistaken, but —. He screws his eyes shut, brows twitching as if to ward the very thought away. 

Red lips and whisky, about a boy or about nothing at all, Guy would be that drunk, that impulsive and beautiful. Anthony can see it all. He can hear the milky glass crack between his teeth. He can see him grin like he wants to be kissed.

**

The ship sails into darkness, through midnight in a blue deep enough to reach into, to lose one’s hand in, moonlit, choppy and speckled. The colour of drowning and England. The air smells like snow, like the dampest place on Earth. The wind undoes Donald’s careful hair, salts his lips, freezes them both too stiff to shiver. 

Donald’s coat is navy, his suit too, the colour blotted out by the night and even the word, navy, is British, upstanding. Everybody wears that blue but on the right man, the right contrast of eyes and skin and calm — Guy can still see the way he’d draw a room in just by sitting, the quick way he’d hide his hands if you looked at him too long, the pin-striping so fine it shot the blue like silver. Anthony drops his gaze now — then — he's so pale you barely notice his lashes until they catch the light, every gesture he makes and doesn’t saying _don’t look_ but you do, one always does and he looks as if he’s about to smile.

**Author's Note:**

> With thanks to E. and with apologies to William Wordsworth.


End file.
